Woman one of three suing health club after chlorine leak at swimming pool in Derbyshire
Enid Hollingworth has not stepped into a pool since January, when a chemical leak at Clifford Health Club and Spa in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, left her struggling to breathe.
27 people were exposed to high levels of chlorine in the spa area of the building. Ms Hollingworth was one of four people who ended up in hospital.
She said: "I was doing breaststroke and I was swimming underwater. So when I came up to take a breath, I just felt this toxic gas hit me on the side of my face and straight away, I couldn't breathe.
"My lungs were burning, so I was coughing and choking. I managed to, I don't know how... I was begging and pleading for somebody to help me to make it to the bottom of the steps to get out of the pool."
Ms Hollingworth still struggles to breathe and has been left with problems to her left eye.
She said: "It took four months for the cough to go away completely and now I've been left with problems with my left eyelid, it's drooping.
"When I wake up in the morning, it's barely open when my eye is tired. So now, I've got to have some surgery.
"I've been referred to the ocular surgeons to have the eyelid lifted - all because I thought I was doing something to keep me healthy."
Ms Hollingworth said she used to enjoy swimming: "I do have back problems. I've got scoliosis and osteoarthritis and that really eased some of the back pain for me, so it was really important.
"I used to do it once a week, but I did 50 lengths of the pool, swimming really quite fast for my age and I enjoyed it. It was exercise that I felt was doing me a lot of good."
Since the incident, Ms Hollingworth does not feel safe enough to enter a pool: "It's left me with far more back ache because I'm not able to loosen up my back by swimming.
"It's left me feeling quite anxious about it, I would like to get back to the pool but I just don't feel that I can."
Ahmed Jamad, from Express Solicitors, who represents the three chlorine leak victims, said: "We're taking legal action for personal injury.
"The law around that is that they breached common law, duty of care and also a statutory duty of care under section two of the Occupiers Liability Act.
"It basically imposes a duty on landowners and owners of the premises to ensure that any visitors on their lands or on their premises are kept reasonably safe, in the environment and not exposed to any sort of danger or hazards."
Clifford Health Club and Spa said last month human error was to blame for the leak - and internal investigations are ongoing.
Erewash Borough Council is continuing its own investigation.
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